Numerous argumentation systems have been proposed in the literature. Yet there often appears to be a shortfall between proposed systems and possible applications. In other words, there seems to be a need for further development of proposals for argumentation systems before they can be used widely in decision-support or knowledge management. I believe that this shortfall can be bridged by taking a hybrid approach. Whilst formal foundations are vital, systems that incorporate some of the practical ideas found in some of the informal approaches may make the resulting hybrid systems more useful. In informal approaches, there is often an emphasis on using graphical notation with symbols that relate more closely to the real-world concepts to be modelled. There may also be the incorporation of an argument ontology oriented to the user domain. Furthermore, in informal approaches there can be greater consideration of how users interact with the models, such as allowing users to edit arguments and to weight influences on graphs representing arguments. In this paper, I discuss some of the features of argumentation, review some key formal argumentation systems, identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of these formal proposals and finally consider some ways to develop formal proposals to give hybrid argumentation systems. To focus my discussions, I will consider some applications, in particular an application in analysing structured news reports.

Argumentation concepts have been applied to numerous knowledge engineering endeavours in recent years. For example, a variety of logics have been developed to represent argumentation in the context of a dialectical situation such as a dialogue. In contrast to the dialectical approach, argumentation has also been used to structure knowledge. This can be seen as a non-dialectical approach. The Toulmin argument structure has often been used to structure knowledge non-dialectically yet most studies that apply the Toulmin structure do not use the original structure but vary one or more components. Variations to the Toulmin structure can be understood as different ways to integrate a dialectical perspective with a non-dialectical one. Drawing the dialectical/non-dialectical distinction enables the specification of a framework called the generic actual argument model that is expressly non-dialectical. The framework enables the development of knowledge-based systems that integrate a variety of inference procedures, combine information retrieval with reasoning and facilitate automated document drafting. Furthermore, the non-dialectical framework provides the foundation for simple dialectical models. Systems based on our approach have been developed in family law, refugee law, determining eligibility for government legal aid, copyright law and e-tourism.

Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) is rapidly emerging in response to urgent needs in both software engineering and agent-based computing. While these two disciplines coexisted without remarkable interaction until some years ago, today there is rich and fruitful interaction among them and various approaches are available that bring together techniques, concepts and ideas from both sides. This article offers a guide to the broad body of literature on AOSE. The guide, which is intended to be of value to both researchers and practitioners, is structured according to key issues and key topics that arise when dealing with AOSE: methods and frameworks for requirements engineering, analysis, design, and implementation; languages for programming, communication and coordination and ontology specification; and development tools and platforms.

The concept of holonic systems has its roots in the desire to understand the structure of natural systems (e.g. living organisms and social organisations) and in particular their ability to behave in a stable yet flexible manner in the face of change. It is not surprising that the lessons learned from these natural systems could help with the design and control of complex man-made systems. However, a key issue is, how can one translate holonic concepts to real industrial environments? For example, one of the key holonic concepts, the holon, can be described as a self-contained autonomous and cooperative entity; when deciding how to implement holons, software agents appear to be the logical choice. In this paper, we summarise the presentations and discussions from a workshop held at the recent International Conference on Autonomous Agents that focused on this issue and brought together researchers from both the holonic systems and the multi-agents systems communities.

The use of agents in electronic commerce has been explored greatly over the past several years. A large majority of this effort is toward commerce where businesses have direct transactions with consumers (B2C). However, the transactions that occur between businesses (B2B) are far more prevalent than B2C. Research where agents are used for B2B can be classified in five basic areas, service discovery, mediation, negotiation, process management (be it workflow or supply-chain management), and evaluation. At the 2001 International Bi-Conference Sessions on Agent-Based Approaches to B2B Interoperability (AgentB2B), practitioners were invited to present their research and industry efforts in each of these areas. This paper summaries the work and conclusions presented at these two events.